i'm joined tonight by john nichols, washington correspondent of "the nation" magazine. john, great to have you with us. you know, we focus on the deal, you know, who is going to get the tax break, where is the spending cuts, where are they going to come from. but in the backdrop of all of this, millions of americans have no security this christmas. they don't know whether their benefits are going to be extended. there is a lot of pain out there. who are these people? what should they do? >> these people are folks we know. my sister was unemployed for the better part of ten months this year. she just found a job. and there are two million people, many of whom had decent jobs before the recession. mostly folks who live in rural areas and tougher cities, places that have been harder hit, where there just aren't jobs available, at least not quickly. one of the things to understand, ed, is that before this recession hit, if you were unemployed, your chances of getting a job in six months were pretty good, very good. now since this recession, you've just seen an explosion in